The End
by ChrisM
Summary: Spooky scariness, twisty turniness, bloody goriness, yupyup. The End is basically a Poké-mortician reflecting on his life while he repairs a dead Eevee for its funeral. Short story; rated PG-13 for content.


The End   
  
By Chris Madsen   
  
(Author's Note: I do not mention any names in this story. That is to represent the impermanence and essential namelessness of everything in the world; basically, we will all be forgotten some day.)   
  
(Censorship Note: This story has blood and gore, and is just generally morbid. If you have a weak stomach, I heavily suggest you don't read this.)   
  
Grim businesses mortuaries are, Pokémon mortuaries being no exception. Here is a place where valiant battlers and overly loved pets alike come to be prepared for eternal rest; a place where those who have an unusually strong bond with Pokémon, those who are unqualified to do anything else, or those who have unresolved issues work. I don't know why I work here; I don't fill the bill of any of those. Maybe because it's a family business, one that I partially dislike and partially adore, but whole-heartedly dedicate myself to? I've never been sure.   
  
I looked at the Eevee, it lay dead on its back, half-covered by a white sheet; poor thing had passed away the day before. Its trainer told me that a flock of wild Noctowl attacked the little pup; something that I didn't hesitate to believe. Many peck marks scarred its now-pale face, one long ear with several 'bites', as they could best be called, taken out of it, the other caked to the side of its head by now useless blood. As I pulled the sheet off the Eevee, I saw that this would take a while; it was disemboweled, and its back left leg was nearly completely ripped off, dangling by a string of skin. This is why I used to warn trainers to keep their Pokémon inside at night, but it was always too late. Never would it even occur to most inexperienced trainers that evil beasts dwell the night until one of their Pokémon pays the ultimate price for their owner's stupidity. I had given warnings about this, but then eventually realized that the death of a prized Pokémon would prove enough to educate a trainer.   
  
I put on a pair of rubber gloves, pulled out a needle and thread, and decided to get to work on the leg. I was determined for this Eevee to have an open-casket funeral, which this mortuary was halfway famous for. We took great pride in repairing corpses of otherwise hopelessly dismembered Pokémon, thus providing the grieving trainer with an open-casket funeral, the way to say their final goodbyes to their Pokémon face-to-face. I recollected memories from my childhood; from a slew of such thoughts, one called itself to my attention, appropriate to think of during what I was doing: The way my father could stitch up corpses with incredible ease.   
  
He and his techniques were what made our mortuary very profitable, but after years upon years, the job he loved caught up with him, and drove him over the edge. One particular night when I was about five years old, I could not sleep, so I went over to my parents' bedroom to sleep in their bed. However, upon opening the door and seeing that my father was not there in bed with my mother, I knew where he was: Working all night, fixing up the corpse of some unlucky Pokémon. I went downstairs - the housing facilities were upstairs of the mortuary - and could hear my father in our 'repair room', as we called it. He was making quite a lot of noise, and I knew something was wrong. This noise wasn't the desperate noise of a man in trouble, though; it was something different. Something wicked. Something unsettling. Something fearful. Something that made my very essence churn; the incoherent screams of my father, a newly turned madman.   
  
Men from the asylum across town carried him out in a straightjacket in the early morning; he was ranting illogically, and had soiled himself. There was something in his eyes that seemed, without a better way to describe it, evil. I stood on the doorstep, in my pajamas, waving goodbye, as the paddy wagon took him off to the loony bin. Our business dropped, my mother the only mortician left in the family, and not that good at her job, honestly. This drove me to take my father's place as head embalmer, studying relentlessly until, finally, my mother gave me my big chance.   
  
A young Caterpie had died in the backyard, slightly mutilated by a wild Pidgey. Once we made sure it was indeed dead, we got it to the embalming table; it was quite an easy job, actually, just wiping up some blood, a few stitches here and there, filling up a few gaping holes - probably the wounds that killed the bug - with colored wax, then spreading about the embalming preservatives. My mother had found a small coffin in our 'coffin room', an aptly named room where we kept coffins of various shapes and sizes for deceased Pokémon, and offered to bury the Caterpie in our backyard. I gladly accepted. The burial was, as a young child would bury a goldfish, very uneventful but with the utmost caring. We left a fairly large rock that shone with specks of quartz on the gravesite in our backyard, and marched inside for a meager dinner.   
  
This Eevee was a lot like the Caterpie, young, lifeless, and never to participate in the joy of evolution. It saddened me, because the thing most Pokémon strive for is to transform into a more evolved species, something that this Eevee, and the Caterpie rotting underground in the backyard, would never experience, or at least not in this lifetime. By this time, I had finished re-attaching the Eevee's leg, and applied a small layer of colored wax to conceal the stitches. I looked at the gaping hole in its gut; my trusty needle and thread would be useful there too. Sewing up flesh has proven itself to be painstaking and grotesque work - not by my standards, even though I dislike it - however, my father would be proud.   
  
He died a few years ago, still insane, still in the asylum across town, never able too see any of my work. I was disappointed to say the least, having taken my father's place, doing an amazing job, and him not knowing anything about it - rather, all he did was ramble, thrash about, and soil himself in the mental facility, incapable of comprehensible thought. I still believe that he is here, for the house now has some sort of presence; I can't quite put my finger on it, unable to tell if it is of a kind or malevolent nature… I never was good with ghosts. Maybe that's why I made such a good mortician, being unable to adequately sense the spirits of the deceased.   
  
I looked at the Eevee's stomach; sewed up as good as new. As with nearly every injury, I applied a minute amount of colored wax to hide the stitches. It was actually starting to look like an Eevee now, rather than a mangled corpse. The ears still needed to be fixed up, I decided to start on the right ear; this would require the shaping of colored wax to replace the chunks of missing flesh. The jar of tan-colored wax, as I looked down at it, silently reminded me that it consisted of my mother's own recipe. She used to make candles, but the business didn't pay enough, so when she married my father she decided to train and work as a mortician.   
  
Shortly after my father passed away, my mother showed signs of aging. She slowly lost her modest beauty to waves of wrinkles, like a man overboard is lost to the sea. The wrinkles marked her face quickly yet slowly, agonizingly yet hardly noticeable until the changes were utterly apparent. During the last few weeks of my mother's life, the wrinkles spread across her body, making her look more like a bulldog than anything. Honestly, as much as I hate to admit it, she was extremely ugly. That is what drove her to hang herself in the attic on one dreadfully cold December night.   
  
I don't blame myself for what she did, though, for I didn't know how my mother really felt about the numerous wrinkles flanking her every body part until it was too late. If I did, I would have comforted her with messages about inner beauty and such… I just didn't know. The death of a person's parents is supposed to mark a turning point in their life, but instead of changing anything, I merely perpetuated the family business. My mother and father would be happy about this; I was sure they were watching me from somewhere, and that was pretty much the only thing pulling me through life, knowing they were still, in one way or another, with me.   
  
The Eevee was looking good now, or at least getting to the point of how good a corpse could look; its leg, stomach, and one of its ears fixed, my work was almost done for the night. All I needed to do now was wipe the caked blood off its left ear and the side of its head. I got up from my chair by the embalming table, and walked over to the sink on the other side of the room. Some small washcloths hung on a towel rack to the right of the sink, right above the embalming soap; I plucked a towel off its perch and covered it in hot water from the sink. As I turned around, I thought I saw something coming at me, some kind of dark mist; it was only there for the blink of an eye, and I merely dismissed it as something my tired mind had cooked up on a whim.   
  
I sat back down at my chair by the embalming table, and thought I heard something, for half of a split second - laughter. I was about to dismiss it as another creation of my brain; after all, it was the wee hours of the morning… suddenly, clear as a bell, I heard it again; maniacal laughter. I looked around for where it came from, not finding anything in the room. As I caught a glance of myself in the reflection from the metal embalmers' table, I noticed that something was not right with my head. It looked hazy, dark, and slightly purple - I had to get a better look. Panic ensued as I ran out of the embalming room, across a hallway, and into the first floor bathroom - the one customers sometimes used - to get a better look at myself in the mirror.   
  
What I saw scared me more than anything before, in fact, it was the first thing to ever truly horrify me; a dark purple mist surrounded my head, obscuring any view of my face. Before I could even do so much as scream, the mist thickened, making itself into a sphere around my head, and forming eyes and a mouth. 'Your soul shall prove delicious,' the Gastly telepathically communicated to me while cackling inhumanly. My body suddenly went numb, and I noticed that I had started running, but not of my own will. He was in control of my body now, having intercepted the neural pathway between my brain and my body. I could still see, and after the initial shock realized that I was still running, but now down the cobblestone streets of the fairly large town I lived in.   
  
'Why are you doing this?' I thought, hoping for a reply from the Gastly, which was immediately supplied to me: 'Your mother and father's souls were… almost as delicious as yours will be.' I now knew what had happened; the Gastly had killed my father in the asylum, wrinkled my mother horribly and distressed her enough to kill herself, and was now about to do something to me. He forced my body to make a sharp turn at a street corner; I was now running on a paved road. Less than a block later, the road turned into a bridge, which the Gastly ordered my body about halfway up. Far against my will, I complied, and could hear the Gastly think something; just thoughts about how delicious my soul would be, probably. I was terrified as I lurched over the side of the bridge, falling a good fifty feet, before my head smacked the bottom of the shallow river. Red liquid, blood, filled the river; as I drifted out of consciousness, the last thing I heard was the Gastly laughing.   
  
'I always wanted to be a Butterfree,' the Gastly stopped to think, just before it sucked every bit of my soul from my almost-dead body. 


End file.
